MLS Cup Final – Zend It Like Beckham

The first time I saw David Beckham in the flesh, he was an enigma on a stage in Union Square before a throb of fans waiting for the drop. Bullshit on my tongue, my way backstage, past security, with a dodgy pass a friend of mine in the ink business has slid me – he worked in the local print shop supplying the legitimate with their access to the soccer Adonis of our time. One illegitimate extra pass for the mere mortal known as me came off the scanner. Security was on the ball, they were counting the passes, and my number was not on the access pad – interloper alert, dismissed with derision, f*** off. “But,” I said, “Becks invited me.”

Minutes later, the veil dropped. The photographic icon was attached to the entire front of the Macy’s building facing the square. The worshipers turned to the spectacle. A gasp of Reichian ecstasy shivered across the congregation, and as the sheath ripped, passion exploded, and there was David Beckham gloriously defined in dominant pose as a superstar sex god in meticulously laundered underwear. Pregnant with admiration, I applauded, and despaired at the holey fruit of the looms sheltered under my ratty pants.

And so I saw David Beckham again yesterday, up close, anointing the pregame press conference for LA Galaxy, three days before his expected swan song in American soccer, Sunday’s MLS Cup Final. His entrance was accompanied by the slash of shutters cutting the air to ribbons. His mirror of fame was so perfectly reflected it appeared like a moving painting. Beckham had conquered the demon fame, now an old master at being the most recognized soccer player in the world, and as we know, soccer is bigger than God. Questions flew from the press corps, he answered in the roundabout way soccer players do but it all made sense. I reflected on the over arched cathedrals of religious cliches that bedevil soccer commentary – which big religion celebrity could Becks rival, Jesus? The Prophet? The Virgin Mary? No. Becks is the Buddha.

OK, he’s fat in the lean way, money, looks, the pecks of Becks etc, but any paradox within seems to have left him, if it ever existed. I fired my question at the LA Galaxy coach, Bruce Arena – the importance of training academies in soccer, the future of MLS. Bruce seemed happy to field it. He knows the academies will produce the result American soccer wants. And then Beckham segued from the next press question into a short reflection of how a soccer academy in England – think of it as a farm for growing talent – had produced him as a player, rising to the top like the finest cream from the shared barn. His success nourished by the collective. Single and plural as one. Zend it like Beckham.